Huge News From the Xbox Front

I suddenly feel a whole lot better about selling all those Xbox games I had sitting on my shelf.

This from C-Net:

Microsoft has announced that the next dashboard update for the Xbox 360 will add the ability to download original Xbox games to your hard drive. Sounds like owners of the 20GB may want to consider upgrading.

Starting December 4, Xbox 360 owners will have the option of shelling out 1,200 MS points (that's $15) for each game they'd like to download to their hard drive. As of right now, there's no word on the average size of these games so we're left wondering exactly how much space we're going to need to free up and whether or not buying these older games used is a better option (you can still find most of these games for under $15 used).

While there's no word yet of other enhancements the fall update will feature, you can see a list of the first round of games appearing on Microsoft's new service after the jump.

The first batch of games slated for download December 4 include Halo: Combat Evolved, Fable, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, Indigo Prophecy, Crash
Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex, Psychonauts, and Burnout 3: Takedown.

Not only is this a great way to bring unplayed gems like Indigo Prophecy and Psychonauts to a larger audience (and hopefully many more), but this will go a long way towards silencing the critics who always found the X360's backwards-compatibility capability to be lacking. What's especially interesting about this is that this news releases not long after Sony removes backwards-compatibility from their PS3 system. Furthermore, Xbox Live Arcade is releasing their 100th and 101st games on the system tomorrow; meanwhile it's been quite some time since I've noticed any headlines concerning downloadable games on Sony and Nintendo's delivery services. I'm sure there has been a few but considering that a developer can't fart without Gametab.com picking up an article on it, the lack of recent news from Nintendo and Sony is slightly puzzling.

Microsoft doesn't deserve an A+ grade for everything they've done with the X360 yet (RROD, anyone?) but as a paying subscriber to Xbox Live since day one 5 years ago, I must say that this service and the addition of Xbox Live Arcade has been an extraordinary advancement to how I play games.

Now lets just hope they get around to making Fatal Frame 2 one of the new downloadable games, as I'm really pissed I sold that one before playing it...